POSTGATE TO PRESENT: PROFESSORS OF LATIN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL Roy K. Gibson roy.gibson@manchester.ac.uk This is the (largely) uncorrected and unrevised text of the 2nd Annual ‘Postgate’ lecture (University of Liverpool, December 2010). Please send all comments, corrections, and additions to the above e-mail address. There are several people in this audience who could tell the story of the Chair of Latin at Liverpool much better than I ever could. However, it is a central tenet of ancient rhetorical theory on public eulogy, that praise is best when it comes from another. Even if that ‘other’ happens to come from Manchester. In telling the story of the Latin Chair I am profoundly indebted to the help and assistance of others, above all Christopher Stray, chief authority on the history of Classics in the UK (and author himself of an authoritative paper on John Percival Postgate).1 I should add in advance that I have not striven to make the story of the Latin chair one of ‘relevance’ or ‘impact’ – possible as it would be to do, and highly important as both these things are for all the humanities. Let that be for another time. Tonight is to be a celebration of a subject on its own terms, and to remind us of all of the rich and varied history of the study of Latin language and literature at the University of Liverpool. As I do not need to remind you, the origins of the University of Liverpool can be traced back to several institutions already in existence in the early 19th century. But the institution that we behold today edges into being in the late 1870s and early 1880s, with the grant of a charter in October 1881 to Liverpool University College. Matthew Arnold gave the opening address at the first full session of the College, on 30 September 1882. The first Principal of the College – G.H. Rendall - combined his 1 C.A. Stray, ‘Postgate unrolled: new light on a classical life’ (unpub. ms.). The material help and assistance of the following is also gratefully acknowledged: Adrian Allan, Ian DuQuesnay, Tom Harrison, John Henderson, Stephen Hinds, Niklas Holzberg, Niall Rudd, Richard Tarrant, and Tony Woodman. post with the Gladstone Chair of Classical Literature and History. Later, in 1884 his chair became the Gladstone Chair of Greek.2 Incorporation of the College into the newly created federal Victoria University – based in a city not far from here – was soon sought. Rendall reported to Senate in November 1882, after consultations with the Victoria University, that ‘in order to meet the requirements of the University it would be necessary, as a first step, to provide a Professor of Latin, a Professor of History, a Lecturer in Geology and Mineralogy, an additional Demonstrator in Chemistry, and some further assistance in Mathematics’.3 The substantial funds necessary to raise the posts specified by Rendall were raised by May 1884, and the College was formally incorporated into the Victoria University on 5 November 1884. The first Professor of Latin – of whom more in due course – had meanwhile been appointed with effect from 1 October 1884.4 Clearly, the post of Professor of Latin is entwined with the origins of Liverpool as a University. Equally, the creation of a Chair of Latin was part of a new wave within the broader study of Classics itself.5 We may think of the institutional study of Latin as a thing of great antiquity, stretching back well into the middle ages. But Latin as a humane discipline possessed a surprisingly low profile, in some respects, until a surprisingly recent date – at least in a specifically English context (matters were very different in Germany). For, in the early 19th century, England, to its enduring shame - since we are still feeling the effects - had only two universities. (Scotland, I should add, had four; that country’s more enlightened attitude towards higher education persists to this day.) At any rate, both Oxford and Cambridge possessed a Regius Chair of Greek: Cambridge since 1540, and Oxford since 1541 [1546?]; but Oxford did not have a Chair of Latin until 1854, and Cambridge did not endow theirs until 1869.6 The creation of a Chair of Latin - only 15 years after Cambridge - at the University of Liverpool at the very moment of the foundation of 2 Kelly (1981) 1-60. Kelly (1981) 63 4 Kelly (1981) 63-4 5 For the close connections between the foundation of universities outside Oxbridge, the shift towards Latin (away from Hellenism), and the move towards subject specialism, see Stray (1998) 227-32. 6 The Chair of Humanity (i.e. Latin) at Glasgow, for example, stretches back to at least 1682. Matters were little different in Ireland: the Regius Chair of Greek at TCD was founded in 1761; the Chair of Latin in 1870. But the matter is slightly more complex than I present it here: for instance, Owens College – the predecessor of Manchester University - had a Chair of Latin from its foundation in 1851, held by J.G. Greenwood (concurrently with the Chair of Greek), later Principal of Owens College and the first Vice-Chancellor of the (federal) Victoria University. But Owens College did not become part of that University until 1880. 3 the University, is part of the story in which Latin language and literature as disciplines start to come of age in England. Come out fighting, one might say. If we now think of Vergil’s Aeneid as an established classic of incontestable stature and grandeur, this was most certainly not the view of many critics in mid-Victorian England. Gladstone – whose name we have just seen associated with the Chair of Greek at Liverpool – could in 1858 declare that the Aeneid was 'more like the performance of a trained athlete, between trick and strength, than the grandeur of free and simple Nature’ and that Virgil ‘does not sing from the heart, nor to the heart'.7 Gladstone, needless to say, preferred the ‘primitive’ – and Romantic – originality of Homer. It is only in the last third of the 19th century that views such as this begin to be challenged, and that Vergil – helped along by such advocates as Matthew Arnold and Lord Tennyson – began to be studied more widely at universities. Prior to that study of Vergil tended to be confined to (elite) secondary level education.8 The creation of a Chair of Latin at the University of Liverpool in 1884 appears to be part of that story, part of a new wave determined to give the study of Latin a higher institutional profile in England. And that wave is everywhere in evidence at other Civic Universities as they come into existence in the later 19th century.9 But what gives the Chair of Latin at Liverpool added interest in this particular context is the simple fact that it has been held by some of the most distinguished figures in the field in the last 100 years or so. Today I intend to review not their institutional achievements – although, as a great administrator himself, Postgate might have found this gripping – but rather their achievements as scholars. In so doing we might gain 7 Harrison (2007), who provides context for Henry Nettleship (3rd holder of the Corpus chair) and his promotion of Vergil (building on the work of his predecessor Conington) in the last third of the 19th century, and for his attempts to introduce the German research ‘method’ – concentrating on textual criticism, and linguistic and stylistic analysis - into an Oxford obsessed with examinations and prose and verse composition. 8 Stray, ‘Virgil in British Education since 1800’, forthcoming in R. Thomas and J. Ziolkowsky, eds, The Virgil Encyclopedia, where information on the progress of teaching Vergil in secondary level education is also provided. 9 The expansion of colleges (later universities) outside Oxbridge coincided with an agricultural depression which curtailed expansion in staff Oxbridge (since many colleges depended on rural rents): hence the need and willingness for young graduates to move to these new institutions; see Stray, ‘Postgate unrolled’ (unpublished paper). A.S. Wilkins is first Professor of Latin in Liverpool’s sister institution in Manchester from 1880; Edward Sonnenschein is appointed first Professor of Greek and Latin in 1883 at the institution that would later become the University of Birmingham; and EV Arnold becomes first Professor of Latin in Bangor (a now forgotten centre of Classics) from 1884. On Sonnenschein see Stray (2004). A.S. Wilkins remains better known as author of a substantial commentary on Cicero's de oratore and editor of Cicero's rhetorical works in the Oxford Classical Texts series, not to mention an edition of the Epistles of Horace still in use up the 1970s. There are entries on Wilkins both in the ODNB and in R. Todd (ed.), Dictionary of British Classicists (2004). some insight into the history and development of Latin as a field of study from the late 19th century till the present day. The complete list of the holders of the Liverpool Chair of Latin is as follows: 1884-1909 H.A. Strong 1909-1920 J.P. Postgate, FBA 1920-1932 D.A. Slater, FBA 1932-1945 Sir James Mountford (Vice Chancellor 1945-63) 1946-1951 Frank Walbank (later Rathbone Chair of Ancient History & Classical Archaeology, 1951-77), FBA 1951-1954 Charles Brink, FBA 1954-1968 R.G. Austin 1968-1973 Niall Rudd 1974-1988 Francis Cairns We begin with Herbert Augustus Strong (1841-1918),10 who, like several other of the figures on this list, passed through the University of Glasgow at an early point in his career. Glasgow had had a Chair of Humanity – i.e. Latin – since at least 1682: almost 2 centuries before anyone in England had thought to introduce the same. At the age of 30, Strong was appointed to the Chair of Classical and Comparative Philology and Logic – a post which today sounds like a cost-cutting exercise – at the University of Melbourne. In ill-health by 1883, he was granted leave of absence by Melbourne and returned to England, and took up the post here in Liverpool in 1884.11 Prof. Strong’s publication record is typical of its era in one important sense. This was a time when the study of language per se – rather than literature - was accorded great prestige. But also a time before ‘Philology’ broke apart into ‘Linguistics’ on the one hand and a whole range of single-language specialisms on the other (of which Latin and Greek were just one part). Thus alongside contributions of an obviously classical nature, Strong also produced a series of books on other IndoEuropean languages, including an adaptation of a standard work, originally German, entitled Introduction to the Study of the History of Language (1891), plus – in 10 Source: G.R. Manton Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 6 (1976) 209-10. Various Testimonials in favour of Herbert A. Strong, M.A. – apparently held in Glasgow – suggest that he applied for the Chair of Greek at Glasgow in 1875; for the Principalship of the College of North Wales in 1884; and later for the Chair of Humanity at Edinburgh in 1891. 11 collaboration with the Liverpool Chair of Teutonic Languages, Kuno Meyer – an Outline of a History of the German Language (1886), not to mention An Historical Reader of Early French (1901), and so on.12 The next holder of the Chair, John Percival Postgate himself, is something of a transitional figure, since he shared Strong’s interest in Indo-European languages, but other aspects of his work looked forward to the increasing specialization of the Humanities, and in particular to the on-going establishment Latin literature as a field of study all of its own. For Postgate – before arriving in Liverpool in 1909 combined duties as classical lecturer in Cambridge with the post of professor of Comparative Philology at UCL, until 1910. (The duties of the latter post, I should add, appear not to have been onerous.) Furthermore, he produced grammatical and linguistic works, ranging from his New Latin Primer of 1888 to the introduction written for I.A. Richards’ Meaning of Meaning of 1923.13 Alongside this, Postgate produced an impressive series of Classical publications on which his reputation rests today, namely editions and commentaries of the major Latin poets, including Propertius, Tibullus, Lucan and his most ambitious work, the Corpus Poetarum Latinorum – the Corpus of the Latin Poets. Postgate was general editor of this enterprise, which aimed to make available in two volumes modern critical texts of every Latin poet between Ennius in the second century BCE and Juvenal in the second century CE. Note here the characteristic emphasis on work of a textual critical nature: the study of Latin literature is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, it is clear from Postgate’s publishing career that Latin is emerging as a distinct area in its own right. I have already mentioned the break up of ‘Philology’ into ‘Linguistics’ and a range of singlelanguage specialisms. Now is the time to say something about its causes. 12 On Strong’s personal side, I owe the following piece of information to Adrian Allan (per e-litteras), former University Archivist at Liverpool: “Consulting copies of University College Magazine and its successor The Sphinx for another purpose - the creation of a bibliography of the history of the University - I was interested to read what Prof. Postgate's predecessor, Prof. Strong, had to say about 'The Education of Women' (UCM, Vol. V, 1890, pp. 8- 14) - revealing that if he had a daughter he would deem it 'unwise to place her in a position where she is led to regard the attainment of academical distinctions or even the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake as the sole object of a girl's life', women having to 'remember...that they are intended to be wives and mothers'. One receives a different impression of Prof. Strong on viewing his portrait or on reading such as the account of one of his annual Latin Socials, in October 1906, with draughts, chess, cards, choruses, songs and an ample supply of refreshments provided (The Sphinx, Vol. 14, No.2, p.33).” 13 We shall see this New Latin Primer again soon: its main – and ultimately triumphant - rival was B.H. Kennedy’s Revized Latin Primer also of 1888, set to be revised once more by one of Postgate’s successors at Liverpool. Since at least the middle of the 19th century, there had been a move to challenge the dominance of Greek and Latin as the pre-eminent fields of study. And no wonder: such learning – thanks in part to the fact that England had only two universities, both of them aggressively confessional in character – was strongly associated with ‘an oppressive social hierarchy represented by the college dons of the Oxbridge Anglican establishment’.14 To develop the study of other fields was thus to challenge this hierarchy. And so, despite the work of characters such as Strong (whose work crossed the boundaries between Greek, Latin and a range of other languages), we find Indo-European philology - i.e. ‘Linguistics’ - gradually developing as a rival field. This rival field even possessed its own queen of languages to steal the crown of Greek, namely Sanskrit. And in the 1890s a whole series of subject associations – such as the Modern Languages Association – were established in order to promote non-classical subjects. All of these things were part of ‘a more general movement towards the construction of a university curriculum of separate specialist subjects, which challenged the old dominance of mathematics at Cambridge and of Classics at Oxford’.15 This is the context in which Postgate belongs. But it was not just in the Universities that things were changing. The 1902 education act – the first major instance in England of state intervention in secondary school education – gave notice that Greek and Latin would be removed from their position of dominance within the curriculum, and much greater space would be given to science and modern languages.16 One result was the foundation in 1903 of a new association to advocate the interests of Greek and Latin: the Classical Association – the very organization which plays host to this event this evening, under the auspices of the University of Liverpool. And the man who played a leading part in its foundation was of course John Percival Postgate, first Honorary Secretary of the Association (1903-6) and later President in 1924-5, just after he had retired from Liverpool. The age of subject specialism was under way. It is time now to say something about Postgate’s time at Liverpool. It is thought that, after 25 years as a fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge, Postgate came to Liverpool in 1909 for a variety of reasons. First, an intuition, correct, as it 14 Stray (2004). Stray (2004). 16 Stray (2003) 5-7. 15 turned out, that A.E. Housman would get the Cambridge chair of Latin (which finally fell vacant in late 1910).17 Secondly, the (frankly) enormous salary. In 1907 the Cambridge chair carried a salary of only £300, although this was subsequently raised to £800 after Housman’s election. In Liverpool, meanwhile a professorial salary was fixed at £500 a year, plus a share in student fees, which could amount to anywhere between £600 and £1000.18 In other words, Postgate could rely on a salary of more than £1000 a year: well over three times that on offer in Cambridge in 1909. The third reason is that Postgate somehow felt himself to be on ‘a mission’, bringing Classics to the industrial and commercial north.19 All I can say is that I hope there was some kind of exchange scheme, perhaps bringing some much needed grit – and a little light industry - to the steppes of East Anglia.20 Upon his death in 1926, Postgate’s will came (eventually) to Liverpool, bringing a sum of £27,000. It is this sum which is being administered to this day with such good effect, funding not only this lecture, but also a post named the John Percival Postgate University Teacher in Greek and Latin – currently held by Dr Amy Coker – which includes within its remit a significant amount of ‘outreach’ activity to local schools and colleges. I am sure that Postgate – who showed so much concern for classics in schools under the auspices of the Classical Association - would have been delighted. From Postgate we turn to the perhaps rather less well-known figure of David Ansell Slater. His obituary appears in the Proceedings of the British Academy, and it appears that he had one habit – emphasized twice by his obituarist – which I personally find very appealing: he was always late. For everything.21 Like Strong, Slater held a lectureship at Glasgow early in his career, followed by the Chair of Latin at Cardiff in 1903 and then the Chair of Latin at Bedford college in London in 1914. In 1920 Slater then accepted the Latin chair at Liverpool. One clear attraction – apart from the cash (something not noted in the BA obituary) – must have been the identity 17 On Housman and Postgate, see Hopkinson (2009). Stray, ‘Postgate unrolled’ (unpublished paper). 19 Stray, ODNB: Postgate, John Percival; ‘Postgate unrolled’ (unpublished paper). 20 While at Liverpool, Postgate produced several works, including one which is still in print and widely used to this day: the Loeb Classical Library text of Tibullus. And in general, one might add, while his other works are rarely read in their entirety today, his name can frequently be glimpsed at the foot of the page of today’s critical editions of Propertius, Tibullus, and other writers, where his conjectures are still frequently cited and discussed. 21 Garrod (1939). 18 of its previous incumbent, who was by then ‘a scholar of European reputation’ (as the BA obituarist does note). Slater continued in the trajectory begun by Postgate, moving ever further away from the multi-disciplinary interests of an earlier era and ever deeper into Latin as a specialist subject. Like Postgate, Slater’s strengths lay in textual criticism, and while at Liverpool he published – in 1927 – the book which established his reputation and won him his FBA: Towards a Text of [Ovid’s] Metamorphoses. In the evaluation of Richard Tarrant, Pope Professor of Latin at Harvard and today’s leading authority on the text of Ovid’s great epic poem,22 Slater’s work is invaluable, because in it he ‘… tracked down three manuscripts that were of primary value for constituting the text, thereby nearly doubling the number of essential manuscripts. [Furthermore] the text [of the Metamorphoses] that [the book] proposed to print was radical for its time in departing often from the readings of the oldest manuscripts and in adopting conjectures, both his own and those of previous scholars’. It is some indication of the vastness of Slater’s subject – and of the importance of his pioneering work - that no fully authoritative text of the Metamorphoses would appear until 2004.23 In his retirement, Slater continued to live at Hoylake on the Wirrall.24 Meanwhile, a successor had been appointed: Sir James Mountford, Professor of Latin 1932-1945, knighted in 1953. Mountford came to Liverpool in after a stint as Professor of Latin at University College Aberystwyth (1928-32) and before that at 22 Richard Tarrant, per e-litteras, whose generous fuller estimation reads: ‘After getting the commission to do the OCT of the Metamorphoses, Slater spent a number of years delving into the manuscript tradition and made several significant discoveries. First, he found in the Bodleian some editions of Ovid into which Nicolaas Heinsius had entered collations of numerous manuscripts not known to editors in Slater's day. (The other Heinsian collations had ended up in Berlin and did not come to light for another few decades.) Using the information provided by Heinsius, Slater then tracked down three manuscripts that were of primary value for constituting the text, thereby nearly doubling the number of essential manuscripts. The text that he proposed to print was radical for its time in departing often from the readings of the oldest manuscripts and in adopting conjectures, both his own and those of previous scholars, Heinsius in particular. Had it appeared as an OCT it would have had a profound impact on the textual study of the Met. Unfortunately, Slater's material was too abundant to fit into the confines of an OCT apparatus and he did not have the will or inclination to abridge it. The unique solution adopted was to publish the apparatus alone, with a lengthy Latin preface. Although that format, and the rarity of the book, has limited its circulation, Slater's apparatus has been an indispensable resource for all subsequent editors, myself included; it is in fact still useful for any scholar who wants to see a more generous citation of manuscript evidence than I was able to accommodate in the apparatus of my edition’. 23 That text is the Oxford Classical Text of Tarrant (2004). In fact Slater, while at Liverpool and during his retirement after 1932, planned to complete a text of the Metamorphoses for the same series OCT; but it was not to be. See Garrod (1939) for the story. 24 Garrod (1939) 351 adds ‘Hoylake, as he first knew it, was an unpretending fishing village; the Mersey tunnel had not yet let in the world, but sea-scape and landscape could be seen as Turner saw them. But now old things were giving place to new.’ Cornell in the United States (1924-27).25 His early career saw him publish on Greek music and on the ancient commentary traditions which surround Terence and Vergil. He also revised – in 1930 – the standard Latin grammatical textbook (still in use) known as Kennedy’s Revized Latin Primer. Postgate, albeit dead only four years previously, would NOT have been pleased with this aspect of his successor’s work, since it contributed to the further eclipse of his own New Latin Primer (of 1888), despite the fact that Postgate’s book was perhaps the better volume.26 However, unlike Postgate and Slater, we cannot fit Mountford into a narrative of growing specialization and the growth of Latin as a subject for teaching and research. And for one reason: in the words of the entry on Mountford in the Dictionary of British Classicists, ‘Mountford was one of those classicists whose scholarly output was cut short by move into other fields’. Those ‘other fields’ were not Sanskrit or nuclear physics – although Mountford was a member of the governing board of the National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science (1957-61) – but, of course, Full Time Administration. For Mountford, after a stint as Dean of the Arts Faculty (1941-5), became Vice Chancellor of Liverpool, immediately after the war, between 1945 and 1963. In a volume published in 1996 to commemorate the centenary of the Faculty of Arts here at Liverpool, Richard Lawton - Professor of Geography between 1970 and 1983 and Dean of the Faculty of Social and Environmental Studies (1977-80) – calls Mountford ‘arguably the most able of the University’s Vice-Chancellors to date’.27 Whether that assertion needs to be revised in the light of appointments subsequent to 1996, you will know best. Mountford was also fortunate to guide the University for just under two decades immediately after the war, and to retire in the year in which the Robbins report came out. In the words of the official historian of the University up to 1981:28 25 For these and other career details, see the entry for Mountford by C.A. Stray in R. Todd (ed.), The Dictionary of British Classicists (2004). 26 See Stray, ‘Postgate unrolled’ (unpublished ms.). For Mountford’s involvement in revision of another textbook of this kind (Bradley’s Arnold) – on which Frank Walbank also collaborated – see Walbank (1992) 156-7: it is still in print. To understand this aspect of a scholar’s publishing activity – not too many university staff today would invest much of their time in revising or writing a basic grammatical volume – we must not forget the vast schools market, where Latin remained a compulsory subject for many until 1958. 27 Hair (1996) 113. 28 Kelly (1981) 291. Looking back from the stressful years that followed, the Mountford era seems one of peaceful and untroubled progress, a ‘honeymoon period’ as Mountford himself once called it, in which money flowed freely from the coffers of the state to finance university development. We are of course ourselves now coming to an end of a second ‘honeymoon’ period of state support for universities, although we perhaps did not recognize it fully as a honeymoon at the time. But let us take heart that the civic universities did prosper, in time, after Mountford, even if stress levels amongst staff must have risen sharply, as they are set to do once more. A very warm portrait of Mountford emerges from the various memoirs left by his successor in the Chair of Latin: Frank Walbank.29 Professor Walbank – as I will insist on calling him (as he is the first of the holders of the Chairs of Latin that I actually met) – shares with Mountford the quality of being hard to fit into a narrative about the development of Latin as a subject. But for somewhat different reasons from Mountford. For Professor Walbank was no Latinist – as he himself cheerfully admitted. Rather, as his obituarist Peter Garnsey put it in the Independent in 2008: Frank Walbank … was one of the greatest ancient historians of the 20th century. For around half a century he defined and dominated the field of Hellenistic history. Above all he was the unchallenged expert on the Greek politician and historian Polybius, who composed his history of Rome around the middle of the second century BC. Walbank's magnum opus is the monumental three-volume Historical Commentary on Polybius – a project launched in 1944 and completed in 1979 – which is widely regarded as the finest commentary ever composed on a historical author from antiquity.30 One could put it no better than that. And of course Professor Walbank would go on to hold the Rathbone Chair of Ancient History from 1951 to 1977. Yet, as he himself 29 30 Walbank in Hair (1996) 101-5, (1992). Independent, 28.10.08. On the Polybius commentaries, see Henderson (forthcoming). records it in his memoir Hypomnemata (1992), being elected to the Chair of Latin in 1946 was ‘one of the great moments of my life’.31 And yet Prof. Walbank was not quite, not a Latinist. For there were Giants in Those Days. Not only did he nearly end up working on the Roman historian Tacitus rather than the Hellenistic Greek historian Polybius,32 Prof. Walbank is also the author of a publication on Latin poetry. He relates how, soon after his arrival in the Department of Latin at Liverpool in 1934: Mountford started a regular staff seminar group to read Virgil's Eclogues … Later we went on to the Georgics, and as a result I wrote an article, later published in the Classical Quarterly, in which I was given considerable help by Mary [Walbank]. It was entitled 'Licia telae addere' and dealt with a passage in the Georgics describing the setting up of a loom; most editors had shown a deplorable ignorance of what the words meant and how a loom actually worked. This article was subsequently to be of quite unforeseen importance in my career for when, many years later, I was a candidate for the Chair of Latin, it was quoted to my advantage as evidence that I was a genuine Latinist and not simply a historian in disguise (which of course I really was).33 After relinquishing his Chair of Ancient History and the post of Dean of Faculty of the Arts in 1977, Prof. Walbank retired to Cambridge, where he had been a student in the late 20s and early 30s.34 It was in Cambridge that I met Professor Walbank, while myself still a graduate student, in perhaps 1990 or so. The occasion was one of a regular series of dinners given by Robert Cook, retired Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge, and, as I shall shortly relate, a great maker of mischief. Prof. Cook gave dinners on Saturday nights, whose main purpose was to bring together members of 31 His exemplary handling of a tricky question at the interview for the chair – as he records it himself – is also worth quoting: ‘The interview went reasonably well, but I was a little disturbed when Mountford, who was in the chair as Vice-Chancellor (somewhat anomalously, since it was his chair that was being filled), asked me what my reaction would be if I were appointed now, and later a chair were to come vacant in the near future in, for example, Ancient History. This was no hypothetical situation, since Ormerod was due to retire in about five years' time. Apparently my non-committal answer to this question was thought to be satisfactory’ (Walbank (1992) 203). 32 For the story of the miscommunication with Syme – then in Turkey – that led to work on Polybius rather than Tacitus, see Walbank (1992) 194-5. 33 Walbank (1992) 154-5. 34 He indeed had tea there with fellow student and later actor James Mason (apparently something of an ordeal, as one might imagine); see Walbank (1992) 107. the older and younger generations of Cambridge in surprising combinations, to make both of them smoke his unfiltered Senior Service cigarettes, to pour as much Glenmorangie into the young ones as they could take, and to step back and watch the results. It was at one of these dinners that I met Prof. Walbank. The first thought that came into my head and nearly into my mouth was “I didn’t realize you were still alive”. And not a drop of Glenmorangie had been imbibed, as yet. Prof. Walbank was of course then in his early 80s, with almost two full decades in front of him. Later, I noticed that Prof. Walbank had somehow escaped having to smoke the Senior Service, and asked him why he did not partake. And he told me a story about how, in his youth, he had been sitting down smoking a cigarette. Then, on being introduced to a young lady, he stood up and promptly fainted in front of her. This was not the performance to which he aspired in front of the young lady, and – blaming it on the cigarettes – promptly gave them up. Later, at the same dinner, after Prof. Walbank had left – and only the younger ones were left – it was then that the 81 year-old Robert Cook sprung his trap. He said ‘You know, Frank is one of my oldest friends;35 but I fear there hangs about him an air of sanctimoniousness, don’t you think? I think you can tell that he is the son of a clergyman’. Now, Professor Cook was guilty wickedness, on two counts. First, nothing could be further form the truth about Frank Walbank’s witty and warm personality. Secondly, Walbank was not the son of a clergyman: it was Robert Cook who was the son of a clergyman, and who was trying to tempt the inebriated and Senior-Service-addled young ones into saying something they might regret. It was, frankly, a brilliant performance. We have come a long way from matters relating to the Chair of Latin. The next incumbent of the Chair was one of the century’s most formidable Latinists, Charles Oscar Brink, who held the post for three years in the early 1950s. Brink I never met – although if I had shown more initiative, I could have done so (he died in 1994) – but I did see him perform (brilliantly) in at least one seminar. Brink was of German Jewish descent, and liked to style himself an émigré, although ‘refugee’ might be nearer the mark, given the relatively late date (1938) at which he left Germany (where, of course, his employment had been terminated). At that date, 35 They were of course at Cambridge at the same time, and Cook went to Manchester in the same year that Walbank arrived in Liverpool (1934). Germany led the world in terms of the rigour and professionalism of its research and research methodology, and Brink is part of that generation of German-Jewish scholars who immeasurably enriched and perhaps even transformed the study of Latin in this country with the new standards and expectations which they brought with them. Other members of this elite band include Otto Skutsch, who found employment first in Manchester, and then as Professor of Latin at UCL from 1951; and Eduard Fraenkel, Professor of Latin at Oxford from 1934.36 Thanks in part to these giants of the field, the post-war decades began to witness a remarkable efflorescence of Latin studies. We find above all a new seriousness and self-confidence in particular about the study of Latin poetry as literature - alongside more traditional interests in language and textual criticism found so abundantly in the work of previous incumbents of the Liverpool Latin chair. Indeed in his inaugural lecture delivered at Liverpool, Brink ‘argued that a professor of Latin ought to concern himself not only with the Latin language and the culture from which it sprang, but also with the question of what made a particular “great” Latin poem “great”’.37 After some time spent in Oxford and St Andrews, Brink came to Liverpool in 1951 – although he may already have passed through in June 1940 on his way to interment on the Isle of Man as an ‘enemy alien’ (from which he was released in October 1940). Brink’s main interests for much of his career were in ancient literary criticism, and the series of prolegomena and commentaries that he would produce on Horace’s poems on the art of poetry – the second book of Epistles and the Ars Poetica - are those on which his reputation rests today. In the opinion of the present speaker, Brink’s work on the Ars Poetica is a case of the unfathomable commentary meets the inexplicable text. But what keeps me (like others) coming back for more is the fact that it does indeed take the Ars Poetica seriously as a poem, and not as thesis that has been made to scan as a bunch of hexameters. In the early 1950s, all this was still in front of Brink, and the first volume in the Horace series would not appear until 1963 (and the third and last in 1982). 36 Otto Skutsch (Manchester University 1939-51) was in fact offered the Liverpool Chair in 1951 before he rejected it in favour of UCL. The Chair was then offered to Brink; see Jocelyn (1996) 332. 37 Jocelyn (1996) 333: the title of the inaugural was Imagination and Imitation (publ. 1953). For Brink’s inaugural lecture at Liverpool as, in fact, taking issue with Housman – the Elephant in the Room, here – and the latter’s notorious rejection of literary criticism in favour of more purely textual studies, see Jocelyn (1996) 333 (cf. op. cit. 334-5 for the similar tenor of Brink’s Cambridge inaugural). However, Brink’s time in Liverpool did produce one notable piece, which was the outcome of collaboration with his predecessor in the Chair of Latin. For Walbank appears to have inspired Brink to work on Polybius, and together they produced an important article which demonstrates the ‘basic unity of Polybius’ treatment of the Roman constitution’38 in the sixth book of his history. Brink left Liverpool in 1954 to travel in the opposite direction from Postgate, since in that year he had been elected to the Cambridge Chair of Latin. The next incumbent of the Liverpool Chair - R.G. Austin (1954-1968) - is apt to seem a figure from a much earlier age, before even that of Brink.39 This is partly the product of training, partly of age. Brink was in his early 40s when he accepted the Liverpool chair, while Austin was nearly a decade older (after an earlier career which partially replicated that of Slater, with a post at Glasgow and the Chair of Latin at Cardiff).40 And from a personal viewpoint I cannot help reflecting that while I met Frank Walbank in my days as a graduate student, Austin died when I was still in primary school. Training and method also play their part: Brink was part of the introduction of German research methods into British classics, while Austin was a product of a 1920s education which still valued prose and verse composition as the height of scholarly achievement. But Austin shared one vital thing with Brink, and in his own way his scholarship – although less rigorous and profound than Brink’s – has been in its own way just as successful. Austin’s reputation rests, above all, on four commentaries on Vergil’s Aeneid (Books 1, 2, 4 and 6), two of which were published while in post here at Liverpool (and two just after).41 In his preface to his commentary on Book 4 of the Aeneid – the one which made St Augustine weep for Dido – Austin asserts:42 I felt that there was room for a commentary which should try to show something of Virgil’s method, thought, and art to a type of student for which the existing 38 R. Todd (ed.), Dictionary of British Classicists (2004) 106; cf. the account of Jocelyn (1996) 333-4. The official historian of the University of Liverpool says as much – from an institutional viewpoint when he writes: ‘Austin more than anyone typified the old tradition [in terms of teaching and research]. “This has been a tranquil year,” he wrote in his report for 1966-7. “Student numbers continue to be satisfactory, and there was sound quality in the new entry”. We can imagine him sitting back contentedly, and reaching for his Virgil. But already change was in the air’ (Kelly (1981) 352). 40 For Austin’s career, see Henderson (2006) 11-13, R. Todd, Dictionary of British Classicists (2004) s.v. Austin, R.G. (by C.A. Stray). 41 Although the work on the first (Aeneid 4) was completed in Cardiff; see Austin (1955) v, Henderson (2006) 48. 42 Austin (1955) v. For context and commentary, see Henderson (2006) 22-3. 39 editions were not designed. … [Such students] need to be reminded that Latin literature is not something hermetically sealed, but it is related to other literatures that form part of many degree courses. They need to be shown Virgil as a poet, with a poet’s mind, not as a mere quarry for examiners. This is what he shares with Brink: a confident determination to treat Latin poetry as literature. And here we must not forget the long and baleful shadow still cast over the study of Latin by A.E. Housman – or Housmaniac as John Henderson usefully calls him – who dealt only with textual criticism and had notoriously refused to discuss poetry as literature (despite himself being a published poet). It is true that Austin could take his enthusiasm for all things Latin too far at times. It is said that as Head of Department he was rather too fond of reminding his Hellenist colleagues of 146 BCE – the catastrophe that marked the Roman conquest of Greece.43 But this in itself nicely encapsulates the buoyant confidence that Latinists could now feel about their subject. But a darker aspect to this new confidence was the situation in the schools: the increasing rarity of Greek at secondary level since the 1920s meant that most classical students in Britain were now taking degrees in single honours Latin.44 The reinvention of British classics – where students could routinely learn Greek and Latin from scratch at tertiary level – was thirty years away. At any rate, it is the motivation and design of Austin’s commentaries – as outlined in that preface – which has ensured their longevity. In some respects, of course, they are beginning to show their age; but they have never been superseded and are still in print – and in use – to this day wherever Classics are taught.45 You may know, in fact, that Austin’s commentaries on Vergil (and Cicero) are the subject of separate study in themselves in a recent monograph published in 2006 by John Henderson entitled Oxford Reds (an allusion to the maroon boards in which these 43 Henderson (2006) 13 n. 16. For the full story, see Stray (1998) 271-97 (‘The Realm of Latin, 1920-1960’). Cf. Henderson (2006) 27-8, ‘A truth borne on post-war “teachers”, however uncongenial to “scholars”, for the majority of students outside Loxbridge now took degrees in Latin only (chizz) and British universities only abolished bloody “Compulsory Latin” in 1958 – the “last remaining institutional prop for the study of Classics in school”’ ( = Stray (1998) 277). 45 And not just in the UK: a German colleague at the University of Munich tells me they are his preferred Vergil commentary for his graduate seminar (although he much prefers the days when a German classicist could safely long ignore anything written in English – long gone, of course). For Austin’s commentaries in the context of subsequent research into Vergil, see Henderson (2006) 68-9. 44 OUP volumes, and others like them, were originally bound).46 In the judgement of Henderson:47 Roland Austin set the standard for the ‘practical’ commentary in English on texts from the Latin canon. … ‘R.G. Austin’ really did name for me what ‘Latin’ means, his Virgil commentaries were (it so happens) my teachers in Latin scholarship as … school student and … undergraduate through the 60s. This is a tribute, I should add, from one of the band of British classicists who in the 1980s originally pioneered the export into their field of that maelstrom of ideas that we then rather loosely called ‘post-structuralism’ or ‘deconstruction’. I will add just one story which should be of interest to this audience. Austin may have published all four of his Vergil commentaries while in post at Liverpool or in retirement immediately after. But why was only one both begun and published while in post? The answer is found in a letter written to his editor at OUP, dated 10 March 1957:48 I fancy that my [commentary on Book] II will have to wait till I retire. I have never found a place like this for continuous hard work, and heaven knows when I can squeeze proper time again – but I shall do my best. I am told that when Austin came to retire in 1968, there was considerable debate within the institution as to whether another Professor of Latin should be appointed. It was only when an unfriendly voice from Geography pointed out – as an argument for discontinuing the post – that “There is no Professor of Latin at the University of Salford”, that the matter was settled. The post was advertised immediately.49 It is with the next incumbent of Chair that we pass from the long departed to the very much alive. I have never met Prof. Niall Rudd before this evening, but he is 46 In his review of Henderson (2006) in the TLS for 9.02.07 (p. 8), Oswyn Murray asserts ‘All the four authors he investigates [Austin, Fordyce, Nisbet senior and junior] belong to a notorious cabal, the Balliol-Glasgow mafia, whose origin deserves explanation’ (subsequently developed, with interesting results). 47 Henderson (2006) 9, 13 (continuing: ‘And they all parade, where it cannot be missed, a dedicated mission to teach the lesson that Roman culture meant to teach ‘Latinity’ as its lesson. Austin explains how his authors teach the formation of the responsible person by education’); cf. op. cit. 38. 48 Henderson (2006) 54. 49 Niall Rudd, per litteras. in the audience, and he has kindly assured me – by letter – that “Since I have a wife and two grown-up children, I am not unaware of my own foibles”. License has been granted, then. And I should add that one of those ‘grown-up children’ is of course Jill Rudd, a distinguished expert on late Medieval English literature here in the School of English at the University of Liverpool. Professor Rudd is of course my source for the role played by the University of Salford in ensuring the continuation of the story of the Chair of Latin. I should add that by appointing Professor Rudd in 1968, Liverpool pulled off something of a coup. Horace’s Satires are a mainstay of the classical curriculum today, and indeed remain a rather fashionable area for research. This was arguably not the case in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Rudd began to publish on the Satires. In 1966, while he was still in Toronto, CUP brought out a substantial book which brought his thinking on Horace’s Satires together under one cover, and it is no understatement to say that it created something of a sensation when it was published. It is still in print today with Bristol Classical Press. In particular, Professor Rudd represented a new way of thinking quite different from that evident in the work of Austin and Brink, although sharing their confidence in Latin as a literature. I suspect that spending the years 1958-68 (at Toronto) in north America were crucial here.50 For Rudd was part of a new wave of thinking sweeping into Classics in the 1960s from nearby subjects such as English, a wave that demanded the application of fresh critical approaches to provide insights into classical texts. If Austin had been open to the idea of pointing out connections with other literatures, Rudd was determined to import the methods used to study those other literatures. The line to be drawn with the past was well summed up in the introduction which Professor Rudd wrote in 1972 for a collection of essays from the radical Classical journal Arion, where he looked back on the strengths and (more usefully) the weaknesses of the old-fashioned classical student:51 They will tend to assume that in a given context a word or phrase has a single meaning which can be discovered and demonstrated by logical argument; for them ambiguity is a sign of sloppy thinking if not of actual deceit. 50 51 For an account of his time there, see Rudd (2003). Rudd (1972). This was heresy in some quarters in the early 1970s, although a sine qua non for all modern critical thinking. I suspect that Professor Rudd perhaps regrets the elevation of this importance of recognizing ‘ambiguity’ into the principle of accepting ‘radical indeterminacy’ as a necessary feature of all texts – a process that was to follow in Classics alongside the other humanities in the later 1970s and early 1980s. But such are the risks of being part of a critical revolution. Rudd’s break with the past would be evident in other ways too. His subsequent book publications would take in further collections of essays on a range of subjects, especially satire and (at least a decade ahead of its time) the later classical tradition; but there would be no major commentary – I believe – before his 1989 CUP edition of Horace’s Epistles Book 2 (including the Ars Poetica) – a return visit, one might add, to the vineyard in which Charles Brink laboured so long52 - and his magisterial edition of Horace’s Odes 3 for OUP with Prof. Robin Nisbet. As we have seen, the writing of commentaries characterized the work of Postgate, Walbank, Austin as well as Brink. But in the 1960s the commentary format, I suspect, felt too much like the past: not open enough to the influences coming from other fields, where commentaries were more rarely written (except, for example, in New Testament studies and related Biblical areas). As we shall in a few moments, the pendulum – after thirty years or so – has swung back, and the commentary appears to be very much back in fashion. But the interval of relative neglect of the commentary was arguably a necessary one. The next incumbent of the Chair of Latin (from 1974) represented a different direction in terms of critical thinking – certainly not one going in step with new developments within the humanities as a whole (and the direction of critical thinking being pursued there). For ‘ambiguity’ is not a word one uses in front of Francis Cairns unless one feels like starting a fight. But in other respects the impact of Cairns on the field of Classics – esp. here in the UK - has been nothing less than 52 In the preface to the commentary – which belongs to the CUP ‘green and yellow’ series, which happily caters for both students and critics alike - Rudd explains the need for a return visit to these texts with a new commentary: ‘The virtues of that massive and meticulous work are well known. It remains and will long remain, the standard study … But these same virtues entail certain drawbacks. [Price being one of them. Another one is …] … some readers (including the present editor) occasionally find the sophistication and subtlety of Brink’s exposition rather daunting’ (Rudd (1989) vii). extraordinary. And he is, I will add, yet another Liverpool chair of Latin with Glaswegian connections, having obtained his first degree there in 1961.53 Of Professor Cairns’ professional relationships within and with the University of Liverpool between 1974 and 1988 I plan to say: nothing. Of his talents for homewine making I plan to say: nothing (much). I myself have only ever experienced kindness and encouragement from Francis. In the early 1990s, when I was trying to get my own research career started, things were not going particularly well. My first article had been turned down flat by two journals in succession, and a second article was accepted by another journal with what I can only describe as a sense of resignation. At any rate, Francis heard about my ‘difficulties’ – both of my PhD supervisors knew him well – and not long after I had moved to Manchester in 1994, he invited me over to his house in Birkenhead, where – after lunch – we sat at his kitchen table and he took me through the argument of my paper, straightened it out, made it work – and later published it in his own PLLS series (of which series, more in a moment). My one standout memory of that day is arriving at the Birkenhead house in Francis’ car, and walking with him up the drive to the front door. At a window on the first floor, immediately above, I suddenly spotted – to my momentary horror – the severed head of a large doll, staring down at us as we neared the door. I cried out ‘What in the name of God is that?’. ‘That,’ said Francis, looking upwards, ‘is much cheaper than a burglar alarm’. Francis’ research achievement is unassailable: author of over 150 articles on an extraordinary range of subjects, from classical Greek epigraphy to Renaissance Italy and beyond, editor of 14 volumes of the PLLS series, and writer of four authoritative monographs (but, so far, no commentaries). The core of his work has always concerned the Augustan poets, especially Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, and Vergil. His first monograph – Generic Composition – of 1972, love it or loathe it, has influenced even those who have not read it.54 53 In fact, Prof. Cairns belongs to the ‘Glasgow-Balliol’ mafia identified by Osywn Murray (2007: above n. 000), having obtained B.A. Lit. Hum. at Balliol in 1963 after leaving Glasgow. Subsequent posts include: Lecturer in Humanity, Edinburgh (1966-73); Chair of Latin, Liverpool (1974-88); Chair of Latin, Leeds (1989-99: Research Professor, 1999-2001); Professor of Classical Languages, The Florida State University (2000-). 54 This book argues that ancient poets composed by reference, whether negative or positive, to a series of conventions, later formalized in ancient rhetorical theory, which applied to the subject matter they chose to handle. Generic Composition went on to create an entire climate of opinion within the field in the 1970s and 1980s But it is not the research achievement that I want to emphasize today per se, but rather a spin off from that: the Liverpool Latin Seminar, which ran for ten years between 1975 and 1985.55 For those of us who lived through the early 1970s, it is sometimes hard to think of a good word to say about them. The architecture: appalling. The clothes – like the politics: unspeakable. The food – like the weather: indifferent. But these were good days for the arts – including, specifically, Latin literature - at least until The Handbag was swung in the direction of the Universities around 1982. Following the expansion of Universities in the 1960s, a lot of new, young staff had been appointed to departments of Classics all over Britain. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, many of the young appointees to Latin posts were beginning to achieve a reputation for their research, both nationally and internationally. There appears to have been a feeling abroad that our ‘redbrick’ universities – a term invented, of course, here in Liverpool – could improve matters for themselves, and that a seminar culture would help things along. Oxbridge had the numbers to sustain naturally selfreinforcing seminars; but was not notably welcoming to outsiders. London had (among other things) the Roman Society, which served much of the south-east of the country. Outside London and Oxbridge, numbers of staff with Latin interests were high in the aggregate, but relatively low within individual institutions: a whole generation of bright, ambitious Latinists found itself (apparently) with no one to talk to. Someone had the bright idea of running a series of peripatetic seminars for Latinists outside Oxbridge and London. No one I have spoken to can quite remember when it started: I would like to say that this is because it was the 1960s … but somehow I doubt it. But what is clear is that the seminar was named Boreas – the Greek name for the north wind – and that it began in Newcastle with David West and others, met at least once in Leeds, and seems to have fizzled out, perhaps after a proposed meeting in Scotland never came to fruition.56 It was now that Francis seized the initiative: just one year after his appointment to Liverpool in 1974, he started up 55 The history of Boreas / LLS cries out for out for a separate account of its own. For a short outline history of LLS, see Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar (1985) 5.491-502, also Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar (1998) 10.391. 56 Francis Cairns, per e-litteras adds: ‘perhaps David West deserve[s] more credit for Seminar Boreas than [is] given to him [here]. Unfortunately I cannot recollect whether he initiated Seminar Boreas or simply continued it when it was liable to lapse. I do know that at least one Seminar Boreas meeting was held after the Liverpool Latin Seminar was in action’. the Liverpool Latin seminar. Liverpool was in many ways ideal, geographically, since it could draw on a greater density of nearby classicists than could (for example) Newcastle. And there were of course the social events on Friday evenings after the seminar at Francis’ roomy house in Birkenhead, where participants could stay over, and – when they had recovered from the home-made wine the next day – could continue informal discussions on the Saturday and beyond. It is clear from those who attended the events – which happened roughly five or six times a year and were (I should add) funded throughout by the University of Liverpool - that there was tremendous intellectual excitement generated by these events. I can perhaps best pay tribute to the Liverpool Latin Seminar by quoting a account provided by Stephen Hinds, one of the brightest stars in the firmament of contemporary study of Latin literature. Stephen came to Cambridge in 1979 after doing a first degree at TCD in his hometown of Dublin, before leaving for America in 1986. Here are his words on the effect of the trip up from Cambridge to Liverpool on a graduate student of his generation:57 In the early 1980s I regularly visited Cairns’ famous Liverpool Latin Seminar, which during an especially formative period for Roman literary studies was the only venue for regular national or international exchange in British Latin studies. Cairns was then, as he has been throughout his career, a major builder of bridges among scholars in Britain, between Britain and continental Europe, and between Europe and North America. It is literally true to say that I owed to Cairns and his Seminar every single contact which I made with North American Latinists until my emigration to a job at the University of Michigan in 1986. What made Cairns' seminar unique was not only its international reach, but its egalitarian feel. It was no coincidence that my first full-scale article was published in the journal of the Seminar, PLLS: as a conference organizer and as a publisher Cairns treated young and emergent scholars on exactly the same footing as established scholars with international profiles. 57 Hinds, per e-litteras. My own PhD supervisors – Jim McKeown and Ian DuQuesnay - were plugged into this circuit; but I arrived too late to see the Liverpool version: I saw only the Leeds incarnation of the seminar. The seminar continues at the Florida State University, where Francis now teaches, as the Langford seminar: Liverpool, Leeds, Langford: hence the continuation of the acronym PLLS. My own one regret is that, in a sense, these seminars came too soon: before there was a generation of local postgraduates in Latin – now happily abundant in this and nearby Universities and indeed all across Britain – to benefit from the energy. Francis left his post at Liverpool in 1988, and so comes to an end the story of the Chair of Latin at Liverpool, just as the long-term effects of the Thatcher cuts were beginning to become clear. But if ever it was true that Death is not the End, this is most certainly true of Latin at Liverpool. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Classics – as a national subject – completely reinvented itself, by acknowledging the fact that fewer and fewer students were studying Latin or Greek at school, and by embracing the highly successful American model for the subject. In other words, make provision for your students to learn the ancient languages ab initio upon arrival at University, and – while they are learning the languages – introduce them to the literature and history of the ancient world by teaching them through translations of the classical texts. The result is that the number of students taking Classical subjects is currently at its highest level nationally for decades, and the Liverpool Classics department – now part of the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology – is playing a full role in attracting a handsome share of this new market. Furthermore, you do have in your ranks a recently appointed Professor of Latin: Professor Bruce Gibson. Mention of Professor Gibson allows me to end this talk by trying to clear up a little local difficulty: I am not, and never have been, Bruce Gibson. And I call on all of you here as witnesses to that fact: Bruce is here in this room, after all, – which, I argue, goes some way to proving my point. Our publications are routinely misattributed to the other – even by those who know us well. And we can’t blame them too much, since the subjects on which we publish are closely similar. Recently we have added the embarrassment of being editors of sister journals (Bruce of Classical Quarterly, myself of Classical Review: both edited in their time by Postgate). And now we have each started writing commentaries on the same neglected author: Pliny the Younger. There are benefits to this confusion, of course – the composite Gibson has a pleasing publication record – and I do regularly get e-mails beginning “Dear Bruce”. From them I have learnt a surprising amount of confidential information about Professor Gibson’s academic dealings. Some of which I have passed on to him. But, on one point let there be no confusion: in Professor Bruce Gibson’s hands, Latin studies are once more in a healthy state in the University of Liverpool. References Austin, R.G. (1955). P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Quartus, Oxford Cairns, F. (ed.) (1986). Papers of the Latin Liverpool Seminar. Fifth Volume 1985, Liverpool (ed.) (1998). Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar. Tenth Volume 1998, Leeds Garrod, H.W. (1939). ‘David Ansell Slater, 1866-1938’, Proceedings of the British Academy 25: 339-54 Hair, P.E.H. (1996). Arts, Letters, Society: A Miscellany Commemorating the Centenary of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Liverpool, Liverpool Harrison, S. (2007). ‘Henry Nettleship and the beginning of modern Latin studies at Oxford’, in C.A. Stray (ed.), Oxford Classics: Teaching and Learning 1800– 2000, London Henderson, J. (2006). 'Oxford Reds'. Classic Commentaries on Latin Classics. R.G. Austin on Cicero and Virgil. C.J. Fordyce on Catullus, R.G. and R.G.M. Nisbet on Cicero. London ----- (forthcoming). ‘”A piece of work that would occupy some years”’: OUP archive files 814152, 814173, 814011’ in B.J. Gibson and T. Harrison (eds.), F.W. Walbank: Polybius 1957-2007 Hopkinson, N. (2009). ‘Housman and Postgate’ in D. Butterfield and C.A. Stray (eds.), A.E. Housman: Classical Scholar, London Jocelyn, H.D. (1996). ‘Charles Oscar Brink 1907-1994’, Proceedings of the British Academy 94: 319-54 Kelly, R. (1981). For Advancement of Learning. The University of Liverpool 18811981. Liverpool Manton, G.R. (1976). ‘Herbert Augustus Strong’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, 6: 209-10 Murray, O. (2007). Review of Henderson (2006), TLS 9.02.07: 8 Rudd, N. (ed.) (1972). Essays on Classical Literature: Selected from ‘Arion’, Cambridge (1989). Horace, Epistles Book 2 and Ars Poetica, Cambridge (2003). It Seems Like Yesterday. London Stray, C.A. (1998). Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities and Society in England, 1830-1860, Oxford (2003). 'The foundation and its context' in C.A. Stray (ed.), The Classical Association. The First Century 1903-2003 (Oxford), 3-22 (2004). ‘Edward Adolf Sonnenschein and the politics of linguistic authority in England,1880-1930’, in A. Linn and N. McLelland (eds), Flores Grammaticae: Essays in memory of Vivien Law (Münster: Nodus: 2004), 211-19. (forthcoming).‘Virgil in British Education since 1800’, in R. Thomas and J. Ziolkowsky, (eds.), The Virgil Encyclopedia. (unpub. ms.). ‘Postgate unrolled: new light on a classical life’ Todd, R.B. (2004). Dictionary of British Classicists, 3 vols., London Walbank, F. (1992). Hypomnemata, Cambridge